While waiting to discuss the 25th anniversary of A Few Good Men with Kevin Pollak, I turned on the TV, and swear to God, it was playing on TNT. The timing was fortuitous, but this wasn’t unusual; according to a 2014 study by IHS Technology, Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Aaron Sorkin’s Tony-nominated courtroom drama is one of the 10 most-repeated movies on cable, up there with Sleepless in Seattle and The Shawshank Redemption.

When I tell this to Pollak, he isn’t surprised. “You cannot avoid it, hard as you try,” he jokes.

A Few Good Men, nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture, capped a prodigiously critically and commercially successful seven-film run for Reiner that began in 1984 with This Is Spinal Tap and proceeded with The Sure Thing, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, and Misery. It also boasted a phenomenal big-name cast at the height of their careers.

Tom Cruise stars as Lt. Daniel Kaffee, a slick, cocksure Navy lawyer with a penchant for plea bargaining who is assigned to defend two soldiers charged with killing a “substandard Marine.” He wants answers from Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson in an iconic, Oscar-nominated performance), who ordered the “code red” that led to the private’s death. Demi Moore as Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway and Pollak as Lt. Sam Weinberg completed Kaffee’s defense team.

For the transplanted San Francisco stand-up, A Few Good Men was “the major leagues.” “I joke, but I was waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘I’m so sorry, we’ve made a horrible mistake,’” Pollak says of his casting. “It’s funny, but it’s how I felt.”

Pollak already had some solid at-bats in movies and on television, most notably in Ron Howard’sWillow,Barry Levinson’sAvalon (“the alte kackers love that movie,” he says), and Morton & Hayes—a valentine to 1930s and 40s two-reel comedy shorts that, like Police Squad, was unappreciated and canceled after six episodes. (Check out “Society Saps,” which features a coltish Allison Janney.)

But Morton & Hayes also led to his biggest screen break. Reiner co-created the series, and he appeared each week as the on-screen host introducing each episode. “If I had not been in his face while he was casting,” says Pollak, Reiner never would have told him about the part of Lt. Weinberg. “I have an offer out to Jason Alexander, but if Seinfeld gets picked up for Season 2, he won’t be available,” he remembers the director saying. “At that point, maybe hard to believe, there was almost zero chance that Seinfeld would get picked up. It was one of those bizarre moments that could have gone either way”—but when the sitcom did get a second season, “it worked out pretty great for Jason and myself.”

Pollak came to L.A. in 1983 with more of a career fantasy than a career plan. Michael Keaton’s star-making, tour-de-force turn in Ron Howard’s Night Shift was an inspiration. “As a comedian, I thought, ‘There you go, I’ll do that,” Pollak says. Rather than take acting classes, he decided to use comedy club stages as a way to be seen by casting directors. “It took a few years, but eventually, it worked.”

His years in stand-up gave him a shot of confidence: “There was nothing I could be intimidated by, whether it was a movie star or a camera or a director.”

Cut to the first table read of A Few Good Men. Present was the entire cast, plus studio and production company executives. “Rob stands up to give an impassioned rallying-of-the-troops sort of thing,” Pollak remembers. “It went on for a bit, and when he finished, I—the least-known entity at that table—said, “And you are . . .?”

Not that Pollak didn’t sometimes feel like he was in Wonderland. His A Few Good Men anecdotes—the stories of Tom Cruise and the giant pen and Pollak’s mother visiting the set—killed on talk shows. Cruise, he says, was “a guy who had the world in his hand but worked with great vigor, enthusiasm, and playfulness.” Nicholson “was goofy, silly, and gregarious, which I did not expect. I thought someone that cool would have to be aloof.”

And Moore. Pollak’s big scene in the film is one in which he lays into Moore’s character after a courtroom blunder. It’s a big moment—but his first few takes weren’t cutting it, confirming Pollak’s worst fears about being “found out” as a non-actor. “Rob wanted a minute,” Pollak recalls. “He says, ‘Let’s go for a walk. I thought, ‘Oh boy, this is it.’ He says he needs me to lay into her, and I’m just not there. And I said, ‘I think I figured it out. Demi has been so unbelievably sweet and kind to me that my character is supposed to be angry with her, but I look at her sweet face and all I feel is affection.’ Rob said, ‘Yeah, you’ve gotta act.’”

Off-set hangs with his castmates were “a whole other level of existence” for Pollak. There was the Super Bowl party at the home of Moore and her then-husband, Bruce Willis, who happened to be filming Death Becomes Her on a neighboring soundstage—which explains Meryl Streep’s presence at the party. “You haven’t lived,” Pollak said with a laugh, “until you’ve seen Meryl Streep watching the Super Bowl and yelling at the television: ‘Stick ‘em!’”

There was also Godfather night at Tom and Nicole’s: a screening of The Godfather in their home theater, followed by an Italian feast, followed by The Godfather Part II. (Pollak can confirm “this, by the way, is the best way to watch Godfather I and II.”)

Through it all, Pollak says, he did his best to fit in. “Everyone is acting like this is normal, so you want to be in step with that,” he says. “There’s no looking to a friend and going, ‘Can you fucking believe this is happening?’”

Financial residuals from the oft-broadcast film pale in comparison to being a part of it, Pollak says—an experience he ranks alongside making Johnny Carson laugh with his Peter Falk impression while doing a panel on The Tonight Show. “That’s a moment for which I had waited since the age of 10,” he says—but A Few Good Men “changed the course of my career and my life.”

One of the greatest compliments Pollak says he’s ever received came in regards to the climactic courtroom scene that yielded Nicholson’s most quoted line: “You can’t handle the truth.” On the day Nicholson wrapped his last on-camera scene, Pollak heard that the crew wasn’t quite finished with his off-camera material. So Pollak, who had spent five days watching Nicholson film his scene (and 10 years impersonating Nicholson in his act), offered to deliver Nicholson’s lines for for J.A. Preston, who played the judge. “Two days later,” he says, “Rob came up to me and said he watched the dailies of the off-camera footage—and it took him four takes before he realized it was me and not Jack.”

Pollak is currently featured on the Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and also presides over the podcast Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, featuring interviews with a staggering array of show-business luminaries and legends. Though most actors say that they don’t like to watch themselves on screen, he goes the other way. When asked if he ever catches A Few Good Men on TV, Pollak says: “Every film I’ve ever made plays on a continuous loop on seven different screens around my house.”

On the day I finished writing this piece, I turned on the TV to cleanse my palate before proofreading it. And A Few Good Men was playing on TNT—truth.

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Photo: By Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.

John Mayer and Dave Chappelle

The two have had a connection since Mayer appeared on multiple episodes of Chappelle’s Show in 2004. Comedy Central has them posted for posterity here and here. They’ve continued their friendship in public over the years, with a pop-up jam session in 2016, and an April 2017 tribute to the late Charlie Murphy during an Ohio concert.

Photo: By Kevin Mazur/WireImage.

Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart

When Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg announced their new show, Martha & Snoop’s Dinner Party, the most novel element of the news was that these two had transformed Snoop’s amusing guest spots on Stewart’s show into a genuine friendship. And when the first trailer for the show was released, showing the two dancing (with a plate of brownies!), the match, however strange, was finally fully realized for the public.

Photo: By Christopher Polk/Getty Images.

Helen Mirren and Russell Brand

Dame Helen Mirren and Russell Brand’s friendship dates back to 2010’s The Tempest. “Russell’s obviously never done Shakespeare before,” Mirren told Jonathan Ross during a 2009 interview. But while that might sound like a slight, the dame was nothing but impressed with the brash comedian and has had high praise since then. Their working relationship clearly developed into a friendship, seen here in a video interview about their work in 2011’s Arthur. Mirren even shared in the interview with Ross that Brand gave her a pair of his underwear as a parting gift.

Photo: By Dave Allocca/StarPix/Rex/Shutterstock.

Ed Sheeran and Courteney Cox

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Photo: By Todd Williamson/Getty Images.

Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett

This pair collaborated on an album (2014’s “Cheek to Cheek”) and performed together on numerous occasions. Gaga has said that Bennett’s friendship “liberates” her from what has been a mostly controlled existence. “I love to rowboat with you and your wife in Central Park Lake,” Gaga sings in their duet of “The Lady is a Tramp.” What an image.

Photo: By Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images.

Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning

Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart, who co-starred in the The Runaways and three installments of The Twilight Saga, like to talk about anything besides movies, the former told Glamour (per E!) in 2013. And in an interview with Andy Cohen in October 2016, Fanning called Stewart her best friend—noting that she wouldn’t go into details about her relationship with Robert Pattinson.

Photo: By Joe Schildhorn/BFA/Rex/Shutterstock.

Alexander Skarsgård and Jack McBrayer

This duo made a splash at the 2018 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where the 30 Rock star could be seen grinning at the table next to Skarsgård, who won yet another trophy for his role in Big Little Lies. What were the origins of this seemingly unlikely friendship, between the comedian and the former True Blood hunk? Twitter pondered. The pair have actually been photographed together for several years now (as early as 2013), and even teamed up with Funny or Die to shoot a nine-day comedy series for Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign in 2015. “Were you guys friends before making this?,” Esquire asked then. “Nope. Still aren’t,” McBrayer joked.

By Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.

John Mayer and Dave Chappelle

The two have had a connection since Mayer appeared on multiple episodes of Chappelle’s Show in 2004. Comedy Central has them posted for posterity here and here. They’ve continued their friendship in public over the years, with a pop-up jam session in 2016, and an April 2017 tribute to the late Charlie Murphy during an Ohio concert.

By Kevin Mazur/WireImage.

Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart

When Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg announced their new show, Martha & Snoop’s Dinner Party, the most novel element of the news was that these two had transformed Snoop’s amusing guest spots on Stewart’s show into a genuine friendship. And when the first trailer for the show was released, showing the two dancing (with a plate of brownies!), the match, however strange, was finally fully realized for the public.

By Christopher Polk/Getty Images.

Helen Mirren and Russell Brand

Dame Helen Mirren and Russell Brand’s friendship dates back to 2010’s The Tempest. “Russell’s obviously never done Shakespeare before,” Mirren told Jonathan Ross during a 2009 interview. But while that might sound like a slight, the dame was nothing but impressed with the brash comedian and has had high praise since then. Their working relationship clearly developed into a friendship, seen here in a video interview about their work in 2011’s Arthur. Mirren even shared in the interview with Ross that Brand gave her a pair of his underwear as a parting gift.

By Dave Allocca/StarPix/Rex/Shutterstock.

Bette Midler and 50 Cent

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Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning

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Cindy Crawford, Rande Gerber, and Harry Styles

Are the names Harry Styles, Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber literally a fill-in from someone’s Mad Lib, or are they a real-life group of pals? Ah, much to the shock and awe of the general public, it’s the latter. The friends were seen lunching together in Malibu this summer.

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Courtney Love and Carrie Fisher

The two were pals for several years, and Fisher interviewed Love on her show “Conversations from the Edge” in 2010. They got candid about life, love, their own Hollywood memories, and their daughters’ pop-culture preferences. When the musician admitted her resentment for once losing a part to Sarah Michelle Gellar, Fisher said, “I like that girl, though! Not more than you.” Good save. And, according to this Instagram Love posted in December 2015, they were each other’s favorite choice for a Christmas snuggle.

Justin Bieber and Kourtney Kardashian

Justin Bieber’s friendship with Kourtney Kardashian was once [rumored]
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Left, by Kevork Djansezian; Right, by Rob Kim, both from Getty Images.

Miley Cyrus and Wayne Coyne

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By Kevin Mazur/MTV1415/WireImage/Getty Images.

Pamela Anderson and Julian Assange

Pamela Anderson and Julian Assange’s relationship is certainly a puzzler. Reports have speculated that Anderson poisoned Assange with a vegan meal, which doesn’t sound very friendly at all. She did, however, tell Britain’s Press Association that her friend, who resides at London’s Ecuadorian Embassy, resisted the healthy snack.

Ed Sheeran and Courteney Cox

Surprisingly enough, Ed SheeranintroducedCourteney Cox to her fiancé, Johnny McDaid, in 2013. The two split up at the end of 2015, but they have since reconciled. Regardless of the apparent ups and downs, they have their friend Sheeran to thank.

By Todd Williamson/Getty Images.

Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett

This pair collaborated on an album (2014’s “Cheek to Cheek”) and performed together on numerous occasions. Gaga has said that Bennett’s friendship “liberates” her from what has been a mostly controlled existence. “I love to rowboat with you and your wife in Central Park Lake,” Gaga sings in their duet of “The Lady is a Tramp.” What an image.

By Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images.

Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning

Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart, who co-starred in the The Runaways and three installments of The Twilight Saga, like to talk about anything besides movies, the former told Glamour (per E!) in 2013. And in an interview with Andy Cohen in October 2016, Fanning called Stewart her best friend—noting that she wouldn’t go into details about her relationship with Robert Pattinson.